Best of the enterprise women in IT: Meet the everywoman in Technology Awards finalists

Who are the most inspirational enterprise female IT leaders?

Anh Nguyen
February 18, 2015

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Inspirational women (and one man) at major enterprises including American Express, Credit Suisse, Thomson Reuters and Fujitsu, have been named as finalists in the 2015 FDM everywoman in Technology Awards. The winners will be announced at an awards ceremony in London on 17 March.

1. Ayman Assaf, Head of Strategy & Planning, BP, from London

Finalist category: Inspiration of the Year – sponsored by VMware

Age: 53

Achivements: Your eyes do not deceive you. Assaf is the sole, privileged man to make the finalists list celebrating women in tech. As IT director at BP, he made deliberate changes to job descriptions to attract more female job applicants. He champions initiatives like BP’s ‘Rules of the Road’, which requires recruitment agencies to ensure gender balance in the candidate pools, and having a woman on interview panels. Thirty percent of Assaf’s leadership team is female.

Achievements: Morrow is a driving force behind Cisco’s Annual Girls in ICT Day, which aims to inspire women just when they are close to losing their own inspiration.

3. Bela Patel, Project Manager, Credit Suisse, from London

Finalist category: Inspiration of the Year

Age: 30

Achievements: Patel runs a work experience programme with local schools under the ‘IT Cares’ initiative at Credit Suisse. She also participates as a role model as part of the everywoman ‘Modern Muse’ campaign.

4. Jenny Taylor, UK Foundation Manager, IBM UK Ltd, from London

Finalist category: Inspiration of the Year

Age: 58

Achievements: Taylor created the Girls’ Schools’ Outreach programme at IBM, which turned into an annual event, ‘An afternoon with IBM’. Each year, IBM welcomes up to 200 schoolgirls to the company to showcase the range of careers available to them in business and IT. She also set up a community providing networking, development and educational activities for IBM females, called Connecting Women@Foundation.

5. Christine Ashton, SVP Technology, Thomson Reuters, from London

Finalist category: Leader of the Year – sponsored by BP

Age: 53

Achievements: Ashton has led a significant project to transform Enterprise Business Systems (EBS) at Thomson Reuters, outsourcing 700 roles to deliver savings of over 15 percent. She actively sponsors a number of events, including Angel Academe, a pro-women angel investment group on technology, City Women Network, a network for senior women within the Square Mile, and the 2015 Teen Girl Champion conference, which aims to help schoolgirls understand how business works.

Achievements: Under Lamb’s leadership over the past two years, Fujitsu has taken on new clients, including RBS, Boots, Balfour Beatty and Northern Ireland Libraries. Revenue, profit and customer satisfaction have all improved during her tenure. She has created a programme called ‘Women in Technology’ at the company.

7. Anna Helberg-Hansen, Head of Business Analysis – Group IT Division, Lloyds Banking Group, from Bristol

Finalist category: Leader of the Year

Age: 44

Achievements: Helberg-Hansen provides direction and support to ensure successful delivery across Lloyds’ technology change portfolio. She regularly coaches mentees and sponsors female colleagues. She also supports a local school by running teaching sessions for four to seven-year-olds to encourage more interest in technology careers.

8. Emer Timmons, President BT Global Services UK, BT Plc, from London

Finalist category: Leader of the Year

Age: 45

Achievements: Timmons has helped bring major clients to BT Global Services, including Rolls-Royce, Royal Mail Group, Atos, Deloitte, Tesco and Seadrill. She launched Retailopia, a thought leadership initiative to create a positive view of the future for the UK retail industry. She mentors a number of MBA, graduate and apprentice recruits at BT. She also sits on the Women’s Business Council, set up by the government in 2013 to drive the agenda towards more modern and diverse workforces.

Finalist category: Rising Star of the Year – sponsored by American Express

Age: 20

Achievements: Chuhan joined Thomson Reuters as an apprentice IT project manager. Her positive attitude to the role has resulted in the expansion and continuation of the apprentice scheme at Thomson Reuters. She has taken an active role in the recruitment process for the next cohort of apprentices, and recently presented at the Technology UnConference at the company to provide the apprentice view of technology to colleagues from all departments in the London area.

Achievements: Martin has helped National Grid make financial savings through improvement projects, such as the provisioning of laptops for the business. She has completed the BCS Business Analysis Diploma and leads the programme of Computing Club for Girls for National Grid, which has led to an increase in women joining National Grid.

11. Louise Moules, Technical Consultant, IBM UK Ltd, from London

Finalist category: Rising Star of the Year

Age: 24

Achievements: Moules is working as a part of a programme to deliver a large financial services client £1.2 billion in savings, performing a managerial position above her band. She has also coached four new graduates and offers shadowing opportunities to encourage female interns in IBM to consider technical graduate roles at the company. She was recently appointed Technical Lead for the IBM Connecting Women community at the company.

Achievements: Davenport is one of two women on the UK board of Xerox. She has helped grow revenue and profit consistently over three years as head of indirect channels at the company. She also co-founded the Women’s Network to support Xerox women and to develop similar networks within clients’ companies. She supports flexible working for women and men, including job share, home working. She also personally mentors women through the company’s management development programme.

Achievements: Smithson-Biggs manages a large team accountable for company development and career management. She is the co-chair of the London women’s network within Aviva. She has led technology insourcing and data centre projects that have resulted in millions of pounds of savings for the insurer.

Achievements: Thowsen recently deployed a reporting solution that provided, for the first time, the ability to view the performance of the company’s many global call centres. This helped American Express identify thousands of pounds of cost efficiencies. She also holds the role of Technology Re-Engineering champion across the company. She founded the Technology School Program for girls, which was attended by nearly 200 girls, and supports initiatives with Amex volunteers, educating teachers on how to teach the new school computer science curriculum.

Achievements: Gaede manages a team of five IT programme managers at Credit Suisse. She is well-known in the company as a champion for women, and has multiple formal and informal mentees. She also participates in senior management panel discussions and training sessions for talented women at the company.

16. Cheryl Duke, Director, American Express, from Broward, Florida

Finalist category: International Leader of the Year – sponsored by Alexander Mann Solutions

Achievements: Duke is behind a middle school outreach program, which allows schoolgirls to learn from American Express employees in order to encourage them to consider a career at the company. She consistently has two to three mentees. This year, she established two community outreach programmes, with plans to expand them globally.

Achievements: Egan is the main sponsor of the Work Placement Program, where 50 percent of her team originated from a programme to develop unemployed people to participate in IT bootcamps as a career change opportunity. This has driven down her operational costs by 30 percent. Currently 85 graduates of the programme are now in permanent positions. She is a senior member of VMware’s Global Women’s Council, which promotes diversity. She is also a champion of an all-girl CoderDojo community group for primary schoolgirls.

18. Kirti Santene, Head of IT EMEA Branches, Credit Suisse AG, from Zurich

Finalist category: International Leader of the Year

Achievements: Santene, one of few female senior directors at Credit Suisse, is a champion for diversity and graduates, attracting and developing female staff. She promotes good teamwork through unorthodox activities, such as locking teams in a room to see how they pull together in a crisis. She is very active in the Women’s Networks within Credit Suisse, including the EMEA Women’s Network and the IT Women’s Council.

Achievements: Through Stover’s work, more women and girls across the world have access to the internet than ever before. She ran a feasibility study which led to the DEVCO-funded ALICE projects in Latin America, and is today the project manager of the DEVCO-funded AfricaConnect project, which builds the first-ever telecommunications infrastructure crossing borders in Africa.